


Tattoo

by rinnya



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe, Angst, Dark, Depression, Gen, If you have read the rest of my fics you know where this is going, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Not Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Recovery, Self-Harm, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century, Steve and Bucky never met in the past, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, Weapons, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-20 05:45:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16550072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rinnya/pseuds/rinnya
Summary: Honestly have no idea where I was going with this. If you have read the rest of my fics (especially the long-chapter ones, This Is How It Starts and Almost But Not Quite) you kind of know where I'm going with this? But as you dear readers know I have 2 main fic modes, which is Extremely Sad And Angsty (feat. Red and Naptime) and also fun and crack and I assure you, this is not the former.WARNINGS:Depression, Mental Illness, Suicide, Suicide Attempts, Self-Harm, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Dubious Consent, Implied/Referenced Torture. TRIGGER WARNINGS. If you're not okay with any of these please, don't. If for some reason you trust my story writing skills and want to read it anyways, drop me a comment and I'll... see what I can do? Make a summary? A censored version?Not as bad as I'm making it out to be hopefully, and I am NOT a licensed or practicing medical professional. I had tons of fun writing this but that is because I am a masochistic and cruel human being and giggling to myself as I ramble on and on (and yes, it is a ramble). Please don't cry.  It's not THAT bad, I promise. Really long fic, though. It's fine, it's fun! But very rambly. I essentially typed out whatever I thought of at that moment and when I was proof-reading it I debated between keeping it in and taking it out and I decided, oh heck, keep it in.





	Tattoo

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly have no idea where I was going with this. If you have read the rest of my fics (especially the long-chapter ones, This Is How It Starts and Almost But Not Quite) you kind of know where I'm going with this? But as you dear readers know I have 2 main fic modes, which is Extremely Sad And Angsty (feat. Red and Naptime) and also fun and crack and I assure you, this is not the former.
> 
> WARNINGS:   
> Depression, Mental Illness, Suicide, Suicide Attempts, Self-Harm, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Dubious Consent, Implied/Referenced Torture. TRIGGER WARNINGS. If you're not okay with any of these please, don't. If for some reason you trust my story writing skills and want to read it anyways, drop me a comment and I'll... see what I can do? Make a summary? A censored version? 
> 
> Not as bad as I'm making it out to be hopefully, and I am NOT a licensed or practicing medical professional. I had tons of fun writing this but that is because I am a masochistic and cruel human being and giggling to myself as I ramble on and on (and yes, it is a ramble). Please don't cry. It's not THAT bad, I promise. Really long fic, though. It's fine, it's fun! But very rambly. I essentially typed out whatever I thought of at that moment and when I was proof-reading it I debated between keeping it in and taking it out and I decided, oh heck, keep it in.

Three days into the future, Steve finds out that the thin angry lines from the blade of a razor disappear in an hour.

Calling himself an artist is narcissistic, he briefly thinks, there are works in a museum with his name on it, but nobody has ever called Hitler an artist and yet they are both skilled with a brush as with a knife. There are art galleries of international esteem that hold travelling works from great names and none of them will ever be his - graphite on paper which he could never afford that were nicked from shelves in school, or from desks in army camps. 

To think he ended up famous for something that everyone no one expected him to do - not that the thought crossed their minds, even, history books claiming him to be the greatest Captain of the US Army, well, not that he would have made it big as an artist, anyhow, but there were the what-ifs. A pioneer artist of abstract art would have a nice tinge to it, Steve thinks, staring at Piet Mondrian’s cubism, he could see himself attempting a Georges Seurat Sunday Afternoon or even a Salvador Dali (a bit of a stretch, really, but he did have a painting of the marvels of Stark Expo of buildings twisting with floating roads and hovering sidewalk benches, but it’s whereabouts remain to be undisclosed. He would never have attempted melting clocks, but perhaps start a conversation with the man himself, or something.) 

Steve remembered tattoos of names and pin-up girls and serial numbers, ancient art of scarring skin westernized by early colonists. Tribesmen wore markings with symbolism and pride and Steve has once etched onto paper busty women for drunk men to ink to their skin. There were plenty of things Steve would get a tattoo of, but he doesn’t scar anymore.

He’d know. He tried.

\-- 

He finds out another day after that, the nursing home where Peggy lives.

There’s an ill-fitting leather jacket in the back of the closet that Steve pulls on to cover the lines criss-crossing up his arms. There is a faded cap pulled low and pants too tight around his thighs, and an afternoon spent dodging the gaze of the receptionist looking at him through the front glass doors of the home that he doesn’t step through.

By the time he’s home the marks on his arms are gone, leaving an expanse of white skin. There’s a letter on the kitchen counter when he gets back, like SHIELD thinks Steve hasn’t figured out a phone yet. 

He doesn’t open it.

\--

The thought’s been with him since Banner brought it up. Something about bullets in mouths, and scientific experiments leading to life-changing transformations, and Steve bites down hard on the muzzle of a pistol he swiped off the belt of an agent he passed in the mess hall. 

There’s a sharp rap of knuckles on the bathroom door and Steve fumbles with the gun, tucks it in his waistband. Agent Romanoff has an arm raised to knock a second time, hair fluttering softly from the speed Steve flung the door open with, staring at him with something akin to pity.

Spiders have way too many eyes, and way too many legs, Steve decides, and a line similar to the conversation from the little red riding hood plays in his head - what many eyes you have, all the better to watch you with my dear. Sometimes he spots a spider or two in his apartment and let’s them stay, weave their tiny webs in the corners of the rooms, next to the pinhole cameras that SHIELD didn’t bother to properly conceal (“like Captain Rogers would have know what one of those are,” he imagines an agent saying while twisting the camera into a shelf screw.) Steve briefly wonders if she knows, Agent Romanoff, but his sleeves are rolled up and his arms are clean. 

\--

He locks the pistol in his nightstand, as if he can’t yank the shelf door open a little too hard and break the lock. Somewhere the agent is getting an earful for losing their firearm, but Steve’s not guilty enough to care. He’s bitter, bitter about the war, bitter about SHIELD, bitter about fucking aliens, for god’s sake.

The bed is cold when he tries to sleep, and it is cold when the sun rises.

\--

Sam Wilson is a friend, Steve thinks, bumping a bottle to his shoulder, like it’s some sort of olive branch. Sam empties it on his hair.

America was still segregated when he had been alive. Brave New World sits new on a shelf on Steve’s bookcase where he acquired it from a store in downtown Red Hook because of the title, and left it unopened because of the blurb. The autobiography of Ruby Bridges is next to the hardcover recounting the life of Gabes Jones, next to the Harry Potter series that Clint had shoved on him, promising wonder and magic.

There’s plenty of magic in Steve’s life already, he doesn’t tell Clint, and there’s a bookmark cutout of the arc reactor in the middle of book 3, which Steve skims through but is ultimately uninterested. He remembers the colour of Lily’s eyes for Clint, who looks excited when he sees the marker of paper jump from the end of the first book to the start of the second, the same sunday after the mission to Laos when Steve has an arm slung over his shoulder and a cast on his femur. 

Steve passes Sam once, twice, thrice in the park, makes a jab about the latter’s running, and changes his mattress. 

\--

The arctic is a desert. 

A desert is a dry area with little or no vegetation, and anyone who has stepped foot on it knows that ice does little for humidity, and dry lips are inevitable despite the water in the landscape. Frostbite feels like burns, and ice held on the tongue was almost as if a scald, and there is almost something poetic about it.

Breathing in water was like breathing in fire, and drowning felt nothing, nothing like flames. Drowning felt like broken nails scratching and chipping at glass, like ice at eyes and salt in wounds, like glass embedded in palms and the taste of copper in the water, and it felt nothing like bubbles rising to the surface or like being a hero and saving the world, and it felt everything like the abyss at  bottom of the ocean where everything went down, down, down, down, down, down, down-

All Steve felt, when hot red spurted on his jawline, was the cool slice of the blade into his shoulder. He thinks of blood welling at the tip of a razor, digging in, chunks of skin and flesh flaying. When he matches the Winter Soldier blow for blow he wants to give in, when he falls he feels like he’s flying, when he hits the water it feels like hard concrete, when he wakes on the hospital bed he feels like he isn’t breathing, when he glides his fingers over his shield it feels like he’s more vulnerable than ever, when he bites down on the gun it feels like-

\--

The Winter Soldier, the Asset, stalks Rogers to a bar of indiscriminate nature, watches him slump at the counter with the neck of a glass curled around his fingers, absently swirling beer, a lot smaller than a man of his status and stature should be. The asset briefly thinks of Pierce, blonde and icy eyed, ego suffocating and manspreading (politically, of course) and he thinks he prefers Steve Rogers.

Shooting him in public would cause quite a scene, he thinks. He’d be able to get away in the chaos, of course, but that’s no fun.

The mask he had on during the fight had obscured half his face and hid all of his jawline, and there was no reason to not play around a bit with Captain America before he kills him, the Asset supposes.

He slides into the seat next to Rogers. There’s a barely perceptive shift in a gaze, and stiffening of posture.

“Haven’t seen you around before,” the Asset says, voice low, tongue curling. He shifts and presses his knee against Rogers’. There’s a light dusting of a blush on his cheeks. 

“Haven’t been around here before,” Rogers mumbles. It’s shy, sheepish, embarrassed? 

“What’s a pretty face like you moping around a dump like this for?” The asset teases, leaning forward. Rogers’ head snaps up. His lashes are long, face redder. He was actually a cutie, under all that black and blue and red and white during death matches. 

“So, money or girls?” The Asset asks. 

“What?” Rogers squeaks

“Your problems,” the Asset says, “two common things that’s got a man looking like,” he waves his glass meaningfully, “that, or,” leaning forward almost conspiratorially, smirk curling, “a boy, maybe?”

Steve chokes on air.

\--

There are fine healing lines drawn all the way up his arms and legs and torso, and it’s like a sharp smack across the Asset’s face.

“It’s pen,” Rogers mutters, knowing the Asset didn’t believe a single word of it, “I let, uh, my friend’s kid draw on me. It’d rub off in an hour.” He’s huddled in a corner by the arm of the couch in a safehouse the Asset stole from HYDRA, head bowed and knees tucked, leaning away from touch like they hadn’t had lips locked for the past half hour before the Asset had loosened him up enough to shrug the long sleeves off Rogers.

Barely a breath later he’s sobbing on the Asset’s lap, chest heaving and face tucked into his chest. There’s a glock strapped under the sofa and a blade between the planks of the accent table, and a capped syringe in the back pocket of his jeans. There’s a metaphor about a path of roses that the Asset can’t quite remember, and thinly veiled threats. He’s not up for the hype of comparing humans to puppies or kittens but Rogers’ head is much like the fur of the stray he fed a bit of his lunch to two days prior. 

There were women in the war - second world, head high and busts accentuated and legs spread, and they snapped the neck of men - Nazis who dared peek. He’d made acquaintance of a lady who called herself Masha, knife pressed to his neck while he donned a coat nicked from a fallen German infantryman in the heart of invaded France. “Your accent is American,” she had accused, back when the Asset had still been Barnes in 1942, and he had shrugged with fingers interlocked on his head, “stolen coat’s better for blending in,” and she had crawled off him and shook his hand and sent him on his merry way. “Glad you ain’t some Nazi, your face is almost too pretty to cut.”

The Asset is sharing a similar sentiment right about now. 

“I’m a mess,” Steve says, “Sorry, you didn’t bring me back to hear about my problems.”

“You haven’t told me anything,” the Asset points out, “I brought you back for a quick fuck and I’m not interested in being a therapist. We can get it out of your system together, if you’d like.” There’s a cleaver in the false back of the nightstand in the bedroom and a rifle on the hidden top of the wardrobe, and there’s even a box of condoms dipped in poison, but regular ones in the same drawer, marked by a dot in black marker. 

It’s unfair that Captain America gets to look good after bawling his eyes out, but it’s no one’s loss and the Asset’s gain, and Rogers’ face turns monumentally redder.

“You can drop the innocent church boy act, your hard-on’s been rubbing on mine for the past 15 minutes,” the Asset teases.

\--

The Asset is a little proud to note that the old marks are gone, by the time Rogers rolls over in a fitful sleep. There are new scratches along his back and teeth imprints on his thighs, hickies along his abs which would fade in another hour, maybe two. 

There’s another blade in the mattress and a third behind the headrest against the wall. 

He briefly wonders if he should cook breakfast. There are laced spices and meats and a bottle of not-olive-oil, and a carton of fresh eggs. Rogers snuffles, rolls again, and buries his nose in the curve of the Asset’s neck and wraps a stubborn arm around his. With a twist of a finger on the gun three inches away and Rogers would never open his eyes again. 

\--

Steve wakes to eggs burning.

“Fuck,” Mark says. He lifts the pan and dumps it into the sink. There’s already an omelette on a plate on a dining table.

“I gave you that,” Steve says conversationally, leaning against the door frame. 

There’s a knitting gash on Mark’s hip, partly obscured by sweat pants hung low. All the marks Steve bit and sucked and dug last night are gone. 

“Maybe I got that when you slammed me against the wall,” Mark says, eyebrow raised. There’s no visible change in his posture, but the air turns tense. Mark’s stance is relaxed, and his gaze is sharp. Steve is briefly reminded about catching weevils from grain, fishing a puppy out of a river, and one memorable occasion as Captain America plucking a cat from a tree. Mark reminds him of the white tabby, white eyed and nose wrinkled. His name probably isn’t even Mark.

“Of a giant helicopter,” Steve agrees, enjoying the quick play of emotions flash though Mark’s eyes as his smile remained bland, “with a metal frisbee.”

“In your blue pyjamas,” Mark says, smile dropping, leaning back, “while you were at work.” 

“Is that for me?” Steve asks. Mark looks from him, to the plate, then nods almost imperceptibly. There’s a fork that looks like the one Steve dug along the side of his forearm last Monday, and a knife on a chopping block about 2 inches from Mark’s left hand, not that he would need it, if things came down to it.

Steve takes a bite. “It’s good,” he tells Mark, “your cooking is great. Is it poisoned?”

“No,” Mark says, softly.

“Is your name actually Mark?” Steve asks. He takes another bite.

“No,” Mark says again, softer.

“Are you going to kill me?” Steve asks, on his third bite. Mark stays quiet. 

“Well if you want to,” Steve says, shrugging, “the 21st century kind of sucks.”

“The widow will have my head,” Mark says, lips curled. Maybe it’s a pride thing, like taking down a target with your own skill against having your wins served on a silver platter. Steve hadn’t expected to make it as far as the bedroom, in all honesty.

“I know I said I’m not one last night but I think you do need a therapist,” Mark says abruptly. He stalks to the bedroom, and emerges with Steve’s jacket, promptly thrown at his face, and a key ring.

“I left my bike at the bar,” Steve tells him. Mark graces him with the flattest look in 70 years, and if his hair were curlier and lips redder he could almost pass off as related to Peggy Carter.

\--

There are 7 terribly hidden surveillance cameras in Steve’s living room and the Asset picks out 5 in a first visual sweep, that’s how terrible it is and it’s almost infuriating. Rogers shrugs. 

The Asset grabs a duffel and heads straight to the kitchen, Steve a few paces behind, and begins emptying knives off the counter to the bag. He sees a fork with it’s prongs bent and blood caked, and turns to stare at Rogers, who stares back silently and it’s almost unnerving. He doesn't break eye contact and liberates every utensil in the small kitchen. 

“How am I supposed to eat anything with just one spoon?” Rogers says, dismayed. The Asset ignores him, starts stripping the room for concealed weaponry, and the pistol behind a bottle of detergent in the pantry cupboard goes into the bag, as does the blades in the couch and slotted between book pages. The garrote wire being incorporated into the lamp fixture isn’t even the least inconspicuous. 

The Asset briefly considers popping the head from the razor, then just takes the entire set, extra blades and all. Rogers rolls his eyes in the mirror reflection at more garrote wire popping out of the floss box. He even takes the bottle of sleeping pills, and Rogers sighs in the background.

“Why are you doing this?” He asks, hands buried in jean pockets. The Asset stares for a beat, tugs Rogers’ hands free and gropes his ass a little on purpose in the back pockets of his pants, and pulls out another razor blade, and a needle. Rogers doesn’t look the least bit apologetic, or guilty, or whatever, but a little embarrassed, and it’s only because of the hand on his ass.

“You’re crazy,” the Asset tells him when he breaks a locker shelf in the dresser in what looks like the master bedroom, and pulls out a pistol with indents of teeth around the muzzle. Rogers shrugs, again. The Asset scowls at him, and flips off the red blinking light behind the leaf of the fake plant on the desk by the window. 

\--

Natasha kicks in the door, guns raised, unperturbed by the startled yelp of the neighbour a door away. Steve glances up at her, then back down at the bowl, where he’s attempting to scoop ramen with a spoon. The absurdity of it doesn’t register until much later, when she’s seated across him on the couch, arms crossed.

“He took all your knives,” she says.

“And my forks, and chopsticks,” Steve tells her, attempting nonchalance but with a mild undertone of irritation, “and my razor, and my scissors, and all the weapons you stashed. I’m going to look like a hobo in a week.”

She doesn’t even appreciate the dry humor, and Steve’s arms are clean and white and unmarked, and there’s a fading hickey peeking out from his unbuttoned shirt collar, and his jacket slung over the back of the chair she’s in smells like alcohol.

“Did you shit yet?” she asks bluntly.

Steve shrugs.

“I’m going to get a rape test kit,” she tells him. There’s a fork in her bag that she holds out, when he splashes more soup onto the fabric of the arm rest than noodles, and in the short 10 minutes she goes to her car there’s a finished bowl of noodles, and grooves deep in Steve’s calf that anyone else would have needed surgery, and hot tears rolling off the sides of his cheek, and a twisted handle of a bloody fork.

For the first time he cries into her neck, and Natasha quietly stitches up the wound, never mind the bone showing. She leaves only after he falls asleep, and takes the glass ornamental bowl on the coffee table with her.

\--

Steve is pulled into the far end of a Target by a man with a beanie and scarf, and a starbucks takeaway cup. Today the word Alex is scrawled over the logo of the green striped mermaid, or something, and the grip on his bicep is firm but oddly gentle.

The cup is shoved into his hands and his sleeves immediately rolled up. The Winter Soldier, or Mark, or Alex, is staring at him in disapproval. The deep finger gouges are healing and scabbing away, but still a distasteful sight, but that’s probably not why Alex has his brow furrowed at Steve like a disappointed parent.

Sarah was always sharp tongue and pointed eyes and she always pursed her lips at black eyes and swollen noses that Steve used to try to hide, less successfully than the bruises hidden by clothes. When he used to want to be an artist, he would imagine himself in the shoes of George Bellows, fists raised as a painter and a fighter, canvas a human body, more often than not his. Fantasies of defeating frail artist stereotypes or not getting his ass kicked or thinking that one day he’d get a growth spurt, or something. Two out of three was not bad, he supposes.

Spiders were one of those animals that produced a lot of offspring and let them brave the wild, in hopes that one or two would emerge from the cracks of the floor between the carcasses of their siblings, and spin a web in rhythmic circles. Life had a lot of circles. Beautiful, easily missed, in crevices and corners and less noticeable than a fly on the wall, and a net laid out where they hide in plain sight and wait for the prey to stop struggling, waiting, waiting. 

Spiders had a much better connotation for espionage, than bees. Wasps were like, foot soldiers. Why a honeytrap? Spider’s web worked much better. 

Alex takes the coffee from him, and slips one leather glove over Steve’s right hand, then glares at the shopping basket that he’s holding.

“I’m going to look scruffy,” Steve says, nose wrinkled. He’s already growing a stubble.

“You’ll look fine with a beard,” Alex grumps. The beanie gets squashed over Steve’s head, a scarf around his neck, and when he makes it to the checkout there is another pair of gloves in his basket, and the razor and fork have mysteriously disappeared. 

How was he supposed to eat without a fork? Half his pantry items were dried noodles. Was he supposed to cut the pasta until it was the size of rice? Which he couldn’t do anyways, without scissors.

He briefly thinks of Campbell Soup, and Andy Warhol. 32 was such an odd number. Well, it was even, but the choice is odd. Nothing makes a square. Steve briefly wonders about the cynicism, then dashes the thought - he would have been a realist artist, he thinks, charcoal and graphite, with or without the supersoldier serum that restored his eyesight, a long lifetime blind of colour and he still dreams without reds and greens and with muffled sounds like he had a permanent pillow over his left ear for most of his life.

\--

“Did Nat talk to you?” Steve asks, cross-legged on the couch.

“...No,” Sam says. 

Steve stabs his fillet with a spoon, or rather Steve attempts to stab his fillet with a spoon, and frowns at it. 

“You should visit the VA sometime,” Sam tells him, then continues to rummage through his bookshelf. There’s a recorder behind a copy of The Giver, like someone in SHIELD decided that Captain America should catch up on all the literature classics. When he looks back up, Steve’s holding the steak in his hand, spoon abandoned, biting into it with visible irritation. It’s the most genuine emotion Sam had seen him make since he woke up from the hospital bed in Washington DC.

“Did you really sleep with the Winter Soldier?” Sam demands. 

Steve shrugs, and continues tearing into the meat. 

“He tried to kill you,” Sam points out, “you don’t even know his name, or where his loyalty is after HYDRA fell, or what he’s planning to do with you.” Steve could defend himself and match evenly with the Winter Soldier, but he didn’t seem very self-preserving at the moment, and the intentions of ex-HYDRA’s assassin dragging Steve out of the Potomac or having a one night stand or putting him on suicide watch were making Natasha get even snappier with what is left of SHIELD Forensics and Intelligence. 

Steve shrugged, again. 

Sam sighed. He got on the couch across Steve, watched him moodily pick at his food, then say, “so, how was he?”

Steve looks up sharply.

“The Soldier,” Sam waves a hand around awkwardly, “was he a good kisser? Was his dick big? Did he know how to use it? I live off gossip, Rogers, and the juiciest deets around are currently the finest details about a mysterious ghost assassin and you’re the one who has them. Come on, spill. I promise it won’t make it to the tabloids.”

And there it was - a laugh. Steve’s shoulders started shaking, and there was a pretty blush on his nose and a smile curling up his lips. Maybe Natasha was thinking a bit much into this whole, well, the Soldier had plenty of opportunities to kill off Captain America and so far he’d emptied his house of sharp objects and gifted him half of a pair of gloves. If he wasn’t straight he’d have a crush on Steve Rogers, too. He was pretty handsome under all that sulkiness. He could see from the Winter Soldier’s point of view.

Maybe.

\--

Nobody recognizes him as Captain America, but he gets a few numbers on scribbled receipts slipped into his hand on the way to the supermarket, anyways. Steve scowls at the rice bags in his basket, like it’s their fault that there’s currently several packets of instant ramen left unopened in his cabinet, or that the pair of chopsticks and the fifth fork he managed to buy from the corner store and hidden in several places in his house have vanished overnight, replaced with 6 spoons of varying colour sizes and a sticky note with a frowny face on his kitchen counter.

A man in flannel and combat boots and long hair bunned up slots his arm through Steve’s basket and all but drags him into the bread aisle. The luggage tag on his backpack says Jack.

He rolls up Steve’s sleeve and glares. 

“Did you just give yourself a thousand paper cuts?” He snaps.

“No,” Steve glares back, defiantly.

“Fuck you, Rogers,” says Jack.

Steve keeps glaring.

\--

The Asset sits Steve down in the middle of the carpet in the living room, and stashes the groceries in the kitchen. Steve’s unwavering gaze is on his back, and if they were knives Steve would probably look in the mirror instead. 

Three minutes later they’re in the bathroom, and it’s the gentlest the Asset has ever touched anyone, and even that night two weeks ago was pulling and biting and sparring on the bed, and today it’s slowly running his hands through Steve’s hair and snipping off split ends.

Steve sits still, hands folded, head bowed. When his fringe is out of his eyes the Asset lets him hold a razor blade, and his hands are trembling so much there’s an accidental nick in the skin before Steve even begins. 

Tears are streaming down Steve’s face silently by the time he’s clean-shaven. The asset covers the tiny cut with a thumb and tilts his jaw, and runs his metal hand through Steve’s hair, and kisses him.

\--

“Do you just have like, magical dick, because that would explain a lot, really,” Clint says, head poking in the drawer, “able to charm soviet-bred assassins of all kinds. Nat didn’t even go rogue for me - ok, wait, she did, nevermind, but is there seriously not a single fork here? How am i supposed to eat pasta? Is that why you have 3 bags of rice?”

“They were on sale,” Steve mutters, running his nails along the side of his arms.

“You know,” Clint says, waving a ladle, “I don’t - aw man, don’t do that.” 

Steve stops scratching, and glares at the coffee table. 

“Do you like dogs, Steve?” Clint asks.

“I’m allergic,” Steve says, “oh. Was.”

“Awesome,” Clint says, “you’ll love Lucky - that’s my dog. Can you watch the pasta for me? I’ll be back in, uh, half an hour? Damn, pasta cooks faster than that. I’ll even bring forks, but like, just for this pasta.”

Twenty and a half minutes and the pasta had cooled to a soggy mess on the dining table and Steve’s hands are raw red underneath the sleeves that he tries to hide them in.

“Aw man,” Clint says, leash in one hand and disposable forks in another, “Steve.”

“It’d heal,” Steve tells him, stubbornly.

“Well that doesn’t mean you can scratch yourself to death,” Clint says quietly, burn salve from a container stinging on red patches along Steve’s arm. Lucky has his head on the carpet on the floor, tail thumping. Panting like white noise, huffing softly.

“You know we love you, right?” Clint says softly, when Steve has his face buried in Lucky’s fur and the faint scritch scritch of him stroking can be heard, “me, Nat, Sam, even Tony. He asks about you, if you’re planning on moving in, how you’ve been, if he needs to design new tech for you. Heck, even the Winter Soldier cares.”

“I was,” Clint says, pauses, continues, “in a bad place, for a very long time. I took the case to track down the Black Widow, not because of what Coulson or Fury said, about me being the best sharpshooter, or the most experienced spy or anything like that. I took it on because I knew that there was a high chance that no one would find my body, and that the other agents in SHIELD as good as I am have something to lose, and sometimes I wake up and I don’t feel like I’ve got anymore to give.”

“But Nat and I,” Clint breathes sharply, “We, well. We care about you, Steve. All of us. The Avengers, we’re family. You’re not alone.”

Steve stays silent.

Then he says, “two years ago I was going to ask Peggy to marry me. I had a proposal about not being able to call my ride, I was going to get a ring from one of my men whose father was a jeweler. I was going to name my daughter Sarah, I was going to meet Peggy at a bar called the Stork Club, a week later on Saturday at 8pm. I was going to tell Howard he was right about the Valkyrie’s controls, about there being fixed coordinates on autopilot, and that I had to overwrite the settings with password after password instead of just smashing the control panel. I was going to go to my mother’s grave and ask her if she would be proud of me.”

“You know, there are fish in the sea, Clint? All the way in the Arctic, even in the freezing water. There was a shark, far away. I think it smelt my blood. I broke my fingers trying to get out. There was a gun on the floor and it got washed away before I could reach for it. I was going to use my shield and smash my skull in, but that happened one time 3 years ago in a bunker in Italy and I didn’t die.”

Clint stayed quiet. Then he slowly hugged Steve and didn’t let go for a very long time.

\--

“I think you do need a therapist,” the man whose name is Zachary today plucks a bottle off Steve’s hands and downs it, “one whose name is not Jack Daniels.”

Steve frowns at the empty space where the whiskey was barely a second ago. “Alcohol doesn’t work on me,” he says.

“Then why are you drinking it?” Zachary rolls his eyes almost good naturedly, “come on. I parked outside.”

“That’s my bike,” Steve says.

“No, I stole it from some sucker who left it at this same bar and never went back for it,” Zachary tells him. Steve wraps his arms around Zachary’s waist and presses his cheek onto the jacket he’s pretty sure belonged in the back of his wardrobe maybe three days ago, and then they’re zipping past Grand Central Park and then they’re at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Zachary is staring to the side and glaring stubbornly at a post as Steve doesn’t stop staring at him.

“Why are we here?” Steve asks almost angrily.   
“You like art,” Zachary mutters. He sounds embarrassed enough that Steve is thrown off, and doesn’t react but follow along as he’s dragged through the doors and past ticketing and they’re in front of a Monet in an empty gallery, and Zachary rolls up the cuffs of Steve’s flannel and presses his lips to the gash in the middle of his palm, and then to his forehead, and then Steve cries unbiddenly into Zachary’s neck in front of Water Lilies with his arms hidden in the leather jacket that was his a week ago.

\--

“I think I have a problem,” Steve says softly.

“What is it?” Sam leans forward, trying very hard not to be too eager but knowing it’s momentous improvement if the man himself wasn’t in denial.

“I’m so sick of eating rice,” Steve mutters, “but I don’t want to eat pasta with my hands.”

Sam blinks, once, twice.

That, he supposes, is a problem. Not the problem he’d want Steve to acknowledge, but they have got to start somewhere. 

“That’s because you’re eating just rice and like, i don’t know, beans. You have to try new foods. Have you had a burrito?”

“There are burritos in the 1930s,” Steve says, eyes narrowed, and Sam almost blurts out and apology when he says, “I’ve been too poor for anything like that, then.”

“There’s a place a street away, pretty popular chain,” Sam offers. Steve nods, and the jacket he puts on is denim and blue and has a large frowny face drawn in sharpie on the pocket, in the same style in the post-its slowly taking over the blank space by the door like it’s some accent wall or art installation, like some kind of Steve-did-something-stupid counter. It’s honestly effective, to a degree, and there’s different types of smileys - well, frownies, drawn by Natasha and Clint and even Sam, slowly adding to the wall. 

A Steve-tracker initiative, started by the Winter Soldier. Who would have guessed?

Sam stares. Steve stares back. There’s nothing in his eyes now, just muted colour and weariness and the stories from a lifetime ago, and on the wall of a Smithsonian is Steve laughing in loop and in black and white his eyes twinkle, and now they are as cold as the Arctic Ice they found him in. 

Sam continues staring.

Steve turns away and there’s a bit of pink on his ears and honestly? That’s the biggest breakthrough Sam has had, and it’s not even because of him, but he’s so happy that he’ll take it.

“Yeah?” Sam says, nudging forward and bumping him in the shoulder, “what happened? You look like a million dollars just dropped on your lap. Come on, don’t leave your best pal hanging.”

Steve huffs a little, and there’s even a ghost of a smile, and wow, damn. Damn. “He took me to the Met,” Steve says.

“You wanted to go to the Met?” Sam asks.

“No,” Steve says. The blush remains.

“Huh,” Sam says, then, “come on. Burritos.” Steve lets himself get manhandled to the sidewalk, then bundled across the traffic light, then into the Taco Bell, and then Steve is slotted into an empty booth and Sam orders everything on the menu, to the delight and horror of the cashier. There’s no excuse to be made, but Sam starts a spiel about running into Tony Stark and spilling coffee over his shirt, in which the man proceeded to enact his revenge by gifting Sam with the power of 10 birds and the hunger of eleven, so he could now fly but had to eat proportionally about 5 times his body weight.

When he looks back he see Steve laughing silently, face down and lips turned up and shoulders shaking lightly, and it feels monumentally warmer and brighter than the applause from the cashier and the laughing patrons around the tables.

\--

The first thing Tony sees is the figure of Steve sprawled starfish, face down on the carpet. The second, stepping over the threshold and locking the door, is the giant wall of neon yellows and pinks of downturned smiles, and a sharpie on the shoe rack. The third thing Tony notices is the puddle of red growing steadily around Steve’s head, and he does the logical thing any man of his problem solving skills would.

Much later, when Natasha comes around - she received a frantic call with Tony blubbering incoherently, but she picked out the word blood and sharp through the mess and decided it was an emergency, and Tony’s tying off the bandages around Steve’s temple, she hands him a post it and a sharpie.

“What?” Tony says.

“For the Steve Suicide Watch wall,” Natasha says, and Steve looks at them boredly, like the blood dripping over his eye warranted more of a non-reaction.

“What?!” Tony shrieks.

\--

Much, much later, when Steve’s wrestled off to bed, Natasha sits Tony down, who looks a tad shade paler than himself and perhaps edging into maybe a bit of Hulk.

“He stabbed himself with a broken table leg,” Tony says, appalled, “how long, who, what?”

“If’s,” Natasha starts, pauses, “weird,” she finally decides, “awful. I think it started when Bruce - I don’t know. I don’t know. The Winter Soldier noticed it first, can you believe it? Raided this apartment and took every possible weapon he could find and flipped of the SHIELD pinhole cameras - don’t look at me like that, I didn’t put them there. I got notified by a techie.” 

“But,” Tony lets out a shuddering breath, “The Winter Soldier? Ex-HYDRA? Why?”

“Fuck if I know,” She says.

\--

Steve wakes up to burning eggs, and the space where what used to be a coffee table was occupied by a bright blue plastic monstrosity, and a similarly horrific looking stool.

The Winter Soldier ignores him. 

Later after breakfast he abruptly spins around and catches Steve in the temple with his metal fist, and it’s far too deep a wound to heal over a night, and he doubles over and off the chair.

“What the fuck, huh,” the Soldier snaps, “Rogers, what is your goddamn problem? You think you’re some unstoppable force of nature? You wanna die that badly? All you have to do is ask.”

“Then do it,” Steve screams hotly, still curled on the floor and arms braced over his head, “Kill me, coward. The fuck you think I followed you back for?”

“You think you’re some martyr or some shit?” The Soldier hisses, “you think you can do this all day, limping around and waiting for someone to pick you up, like some magical cure or head shrink is gonna turn up and make you better in an instant? You’re insane and you don’t even know it.”

“Then do it,” Steve screams, again, voice cracking, hoarse, “there’s a gun in your bag and your arm’s a murder weapon and you won’t even use it.”

The Soldier steps out of Steve’s line of sight, and almost immediately metal hits the back of his hand. It’s a pistol, mark on the metal on the muzzle and slight indent on the grip from where someone squeezed too hard on it, and Steve remembers the bitter taste of it and he grabs blindly for it and-

\-- 

“God, Steve,” The Asset says.

It’s a blank in the gun and the sound of the shot rings across like a church bell, and then it’s heavy silence punctuated with hiccups of sobs and heaving of breaths. 

How ironic, Steve thinks a little hysterically, for his thoughts to drift towards God, even then. He was once catholic. 

“Why can’t anyone just let me die,” Steve sobs, and the Asset thinks of being strapped to a cold table and electric chairs and mouth guards and young girls with dark uniforms and bright hair, and Steve twists the handle of the pistol and there’s a tearing of metal and it comes free.

The Asset kicks the gun away and it slides under the couch, and he lies by Steve and stares into his eyes and Steve stares back, and his face is blotchy and there's a determined set to his jaw and defiance in his eyes.

“You’ve got so much fight in you,” the Asset murmurs, swiping his thumb over the blood on the bottom of Steve’s trembling lip, “why do you want the flame to go out like that?”

“It’s so cold,” Steve whispers, “it’s so cold.”

The serum running through his veins makes the Asset warm to the touch, metabolism running high and energy higher, and Steve is hot in his arms and shivering. “You’re burning up,” the Asset murmurs, “you’re burning up and out and you’ve got more heat to lose, and it’s cold all the time for you and there’s nowhere warmer.”

“The ice was warmer,” Steve tells him, fat tears wetting the carpet, “the ice was burning.”

“The ice was cold, Steve,” the Asset says, frowning sadly, “ice is cold. It was cold for me, all the time.” He hesitates, and Steve snuffles in the pause, and stays silent. The Asset’s gaze softens, and he lightly runs his hand through Steve’s hair and shifts so their noses touch. “You’re warmer than the ice,” he tells Steve, “you’re warmer than a blanket.” And just because he couldn’t resist the Asset adds “In fact, I’d say you’re hot like burning.”

Steve chokes out a laugh despite himself. The Asset leans forward. “You taste like eggs,” Steve says softly, 10 minutes later when they’re still on the kitchen floor. “You taste like blood,” the Asset tells him, a teasing lilt to his voice. He kisses Steve again, long and slow, tasting copper and salt and bitter tears, and then tugs him forward to wrap his arms around him, and then kiss him more. Steve matches his pace, slow and tired, forward, head tilt, backward, tilt again. 

Then Steve breaks the rhythm and leans back and the Asset lets him take a breath, but then Steve says, “Sam’s laugh is warm.” 

There’s something caught in his throat. “Yeah?” The Asset, not trusting his voice to remain steady. It’s like a gyroscope in an earthquake.

“Natasha’s hugs are warm,” Steve says, and there’s a little quirk of his lips that’s the most adorable thing ever. “Clint’s smile is warm,” Steve says idly, “his dog's fur is warm. Tony’s voice is wam.” The Asset briefly wonders if Steve wants a dog. Then, “you’re warmer than a blanket, too,” and Steve’s staring like he’s daring the Asset to disprove him or something, chin jutted out and lips pursed, effect dampened by blood flowing over the curves of his face.

“I’ll re-bandage your face,” the Asset offers, but he refuses to feel guilt. Steve shrugs like that’s fair, and for a little bit there’s a little-shit Steve Rogers somewhere inside and the Asset straddles Steve and kisses him more.

The morning after finds Steve on the carpet by the couch, two halves of a gun in his hands. The Asset takes the gun and wrenches out the magazine and dismantles it the best he can, then he takes Steve’s hands and folds it on his lap and says, “we’ll work on it, okay?”

\--

When Clint drops by with bread in a bag and tacos in another, there’s lines in black curling all the way up Steve’s arms and the page marker cutout of a arc reactor on the table and a blond head buried in the final book in the series.

“Snape is a dick,” Steve says when Clint sets the food down, “he was such a bully.”

“He was,” Clint agrees. Steve continues flipping. His sleeves are rolled up and someone has scribbled sharpie all over his forearm and halfway up his right pant leg, random circles and swirls and stars and stripes, like it was some kind of Where’s Waldo or Keith Haring or Pictionary, and there was a tiny Captain America shield and even a little bow and arrow and one of Nat’s widow bites. There’s a capped sharpie on the table, and Steve looks up briefly to smile at Clint, and motion to the sharpie. Clint takes it, and draws long squiggles along the seam.

“Have you heard of the very potter musical?” Clint says abruptly, when Steve turns a page again and Clint sees he’s on the last chapter, “or potter puppet pals?”

“No,” Steve says.

“Well they’re great,” Clint says, “do you want to watch them?”

He tilts his head and gives Clint a very considering look, then shrugs and says, “sure,” and there’s a bit of a gentle smile and softness in the hard edges around his eyes, and Clint jumps to get his laptop.

\--

It’s Natasha who meets the Winter Soldier first, stepping silently into Steve’s living room and shutting the door behind her, noting proudly the addition of only 2 post its on her week absence in Israel gathering intelligence, and turning the corner to see two men tangled on the couch. 

Natasha doesn’t bring weapons into Steve’s house - it’s all in her car, as a sign of respect or friendship or anything else, or maybe it’s how they take Steve’s Brooklyn apartment as some sort of peace-offering truce or safe place or neutral ground, like crossing No Man’s Land on the western front on the Christmas of 1914. The Winter Soldier himself is lying on his back, running a hand along Steve’s spine with another pillowing his head, Steve breathing even and low and eyes shut. His gaze flicks over to her, then down to Steve, then meets her eyes, and it’s some sort of staring contest, but for some reason he looks away first.

More than anything, it’s a peace offering. Natasha takes it.

Natasha has reusable bags full of cans of food with pull-tabs instead of needing openers, and packages of leafy vegetables and carrots and potatoes, and she steps into the kitchen and puts everything away and sees a little pot of basil by the windowsill, with a little picket sign that says “Water me!” in what does not seem to be Steve’s handwriting, or Tony’s, or Clint’s or Sam’s.

The soldier glares at her when she re-emerges like he knows why exactly she has an eyebrow raised, challenging her to say a word about it. Natasha smiles a little at him, which seems to put the soldier off more, then takes a post-it and draws a smiley and tacks it on the opposite side of the doorway across from the wall with the frownies, and then shuts the door quietly behind her.

\--

Bruce does step out of the car with Tony incessantly tugging on his arm, whining in the same fashion he did bursting into the lab one night and sobbing about table legs and wood and Captain America, and suicidal tendencies. 

The first sight they are greeted to is Steve with his hands tied behind his back with a soft rope of cloth, cross-legged and sitting in front of the television, glaring at the nature documentary like penguins have offended him with a passion, (maybe a penguin flipped him the bird in the Arctic, haha a pun, Tony thinks rather hysterically to himself), then at both Bruce and Tony. There’s a clanging from the kitchen, out of courtesy to announce the presence of a person, and then the Winter Soldier walks out and squints at them. 

Steve whips around to glare at him. The Soldier glares back, and even warningly waves a spatula like he’s an exasperated mother of 12 in a 1950s disney cartoon. There are squiggles in black ink on Steve’s left hand, and crudely mirrored marks on his right made with the sharp end of a blunt object, raw and healing over. 

“Is this a sex thing?” Tony blurts.

“He’s in time-out,” the Soldier says, and maybe Bruce is sleep deprived but there’s a slight bit of weariness and fondness and frustration and affection, Steve continues listening to David Attenborough sullenly with flightless birds tumbling around the screen.

“You’re in time-out,” Steve snarks back. The Soldier whaps him on the head with the spatula, abiet gently.

“You know sharpie comes in tons of different colours,” Tony says, practically vibrating on the spot, the most nervous Bruce has ever seen him, “I mean, black is standard and fine, but there’s red too, uh, I mean, the marker. You don’t have to, use your own, red, uh, blood...” his voice trails off and then Tony shifts uncomfortably when the Soldier and Steve both turn to stare at him meaningfully.

Then the Soldier says rather patronizingly, “hear that, Steve? Store bought blood is fine.”

Bruce feels as uncomfortable as Tony looks, but apparently Steve seems rather at ease with the proceedings - he did still look very much like a disgruntled kitten, and his messy hair (looking a lot like it’s been tugged and run through with fingers but Bruce wasn’t going to think about that) and red nose reminded Bruce of a lion, or something, but a mildly annoyed one, who had the ability to break out of what seemed to be a T-shirt tied around his hands at any point of time but decided to just live with it, for whatever reasons he still did not want to think about. Maybe it was a sex thing.

“You know I do meditation,” Bruce offers, later in the evening when the Soldier steps out for a thing or another once Steve’s arm heals and he removes the cuffs and it is, in fact, a T-shirt rolled up tightly enough to leave faint red marks around his wrists, and the Soldier does run his hands through Steve’s head a couple of times and Bruce would say it didn’t remind him of petting a cat but then he would be lying. “I had to learn how to manage my emotions and keep really calm to avoid triggering the Hulk,” Bruce says, “I did travel to many countries and sat in temples for it, but I could give you some pointers.”

Steve shrugs.

“You need to clear your head,” Bruce says, “but of course you won’t start with that. Try starting with thinking about something like focusing on your breathing, or listening to slow music that would keep your heart rate low and steady. If you do need to think about something, watch calming repeated actions like fish swimming, or go cloud watching, or drawing on your hands is good, as an alternative to, uh, other stuff. Swirly lines, simple doodles, that sort of thing.”

“I don’t,” Steve starts, falls silent. Then he says, “sorry.”

Bruce is startled. “What for?” He says. Tony pauses in his dismantling of the toaster that looks like it hasn’t been used for weeks, because taking things apart was practically mindless for Tony and it did good to keep his hands moving when he was nervous.

“I didn’t,” Steve starts, “I, I don’t,” he falls silent. Then, “Nothing. Sorry.”

“We’re all here for you,” Bruce tells him.

“You’re warm,” Steve blurts out, then looks shocked at himself, then shudders and looks down and looks back up and he’s trying his hardest to smile and not cry, and then Tony’s sitting next to both of them and pulling them into a hug, and Steve mumbles something about Tony being warm too.

\--

It’s the first time in a long time that Steve calls Sam up on his own accord and says, with words, that he wants to go do something, so Sam calls for a day off and puts on shoes from two different pairs and gets in his car, something he doesn’t realize until he bursts into the apartment and Steve’s staring at his feet in offense, and the Soldier looks up from the couch to give Sam the most unimpressed look since Tony had stared him down for calling his Samsung a state-of-the-art electronic device.

Oh, turns out his socks were mismatched, too.

But Steve’s wearing the pair of jeans with black ink all the way up one pant leg and another painfully bare so Sam refuses to be ashamed of his matching skills, and holds his head high and sticks an arm out. Steve ducks his head shyly and links his arms through Sam, who doesn’t have to turn around to know that the Soldier is glaring because the temperature just chilled a degree lower. And there’s a little-shit Steve who narrows his eyes at someone behind his back and puts his head on Sam’s shoulder, and this is it, Sam thinks, Goodbye Mom, Goodbye Dad, this is how he leaves this world, murdered by a jealous assassin because he stole his boyfriend. 

Steve seems more smug at Sam’s impending death, if anything. 

There is an aquarium somewhere in the heart of Manhattan that apparently has Tony’s seal of approval, which means it’s probably high class and there would be champagne at the door or some shit and Sam would be turned down on principle just because of the neon orange and pink running shoes he has on from two wildly competing brands, but maybe Steve gets lucky because he has a cute smile and a pretty face (that is, if Sam manages to get him to smile,) despite his horrific art disaster of his Levis.

Miraculously it’s not a complete disaster, Sam notes, he only gets one a judgeful look from the ticketer directed at his feet and only 2 people try to flirt with Steve in the line, and no one recognizes them from being the vigilantes splashed across television and mobile screens from months prior, like they’re a sponsored ad from some failing brand, which Sam thinks back on much later and notes that they actually are.

Steve doesn’t let go of his hand the entire time they’re there, wandering from tank to tank and sign to sign, reading everything and stopping to listen to every recording until it loops, and he spends a long time in front of the shark tank watching the whites swim and twist and turn, and then he tells Sam, “there was a shark when I was in the Valkyrie,” and Sam squeezes his hand tighter. 

When they’re in the gift shop there is, of all things, a scale model of the wreck of a world war 2 plane, and Steve spends a disturbing amount of time with his feet planted and squinting at the model while Sam tries to distract him with a novelty T-shirt with a pun on it, and then eventually Steve says, “they got the nose wrong. There’s supposed to be three window panels, not four.”

And then he says, “I’m glad you’re my friend, Sam. You’re warm,” and Sam certainly feels it.

\--

“So,” Sam asks, “are you and the Winter Soldier like, a thing now?”

Steve thinks his face grows hot and wills himself not to blush, and judging by the absolutely gleeful look Sam is sporting, still holding onto his hand, he doesn’t want to know how red his face actually is.

“I don’t know,” Steve murmurs, but the Soldier had all but moved in, disappearing for hours in the day and coming back to a wam bed and a gravity blanket that had appeared one afternoon and stayed the nights, and there have been lazy makeout sessions and they haven’t had sex since he’d picked Steve up from the bar with the intentions of finishing him, and not even in the sexual way. He doesn’t quite know where they stand, not fully, or why or how they got to this arrangement.

“Magical dick, Steven,” Sam says, with the voice and look that tells Steve he’d been spending too much time with Clint.

“We only fucked once,” Steve grumbled, and Sam laughs and it’s like christmas bells and fairy lights and honey sweetness, and warmth. Sam nudged him lightly, saying, “He’s smitten, Steve. And so are you, I suppose?” Accompanied with an eyebrow raised and a smirk and Steve huffs.

Sam would be a storyteller, Steve thinks, sitting in front of crowds of starry-eyed children and spinning tales of silk and magic carpets the way that Natasha weaves webs of lies, fantastical and honey-bright. There would be some parents, and tired businessmen and even bored teens, sitting up just a little straighter because storybooks were all fiction but people still read novels because of the pure artistry of it, and Sam speaks like he fights, languidly and fluidly.

People got tattoos of words, a lot of times. Quotes from famous people or inside jokes or vows or names, the titles of stories or places or logos or things. Steve couldn’t think of words important enough to permanently ink into his body - not like he could if he wanted to, anyways, but there was nothing in particular that stood out to him, or a word or two or a phrase that summarized his entire life, or something. 

A picture was worth a thousand but not like he could think of a picture he wanted as a forever, and of course tattoo removal existed but getting a tattoo with the foreseeable end goal of erasing it was just a pitiful and saddening thought, but that was how it was, wasn't it, stepping up the mantle of Captain America and knowing he had nothing and no one to come back to and expecting to die in the war. 

And there were tons of things made to be torn and broken and thrown away. Garbage bags. Light sticks. Movie tickets. Those plastic packagings around other plastic packaging. 

Sam spins a tale about retail shenanigans from back when he arranged racks and answered questions about screws and hammers in college, “no Ma’am, screws come in different sizes, yes I do need to know the brand of your blender, yes the screw sizes are different for the various brands, no you can’t take them all and return the wrong ones without paying I can’t even authorize that if you write an IOU saying you’ll definitely come back-”

Steve barks out laughter, and tugs Sam closer to him and he’s warm and Steve feels it.

\--

Natasha climbs into the window one morning just when Tony wraps an arm around Steve’s shoulders (an incredible feat accomplished by standing on tiptoe and awkwardly bending Steve’s back) and manhandles him out of the door with a verbal promise to bring Steve out on an afternoon of debauchery and home for dinner, and Steve is mortified enough to squak and the Winter Soldier is amused enough to grin.

“Bye, Russians,” Tony says.

Natasha waves a little, one leg over the window ledge. The Soldier briefly glances at her, and goes back to folding laundry, because this is their life now, whipped cream and soft putty and pillows in the presence of certain blond Avengers that shall not be named. Natasha wants to say she’s ashamed, the world’s greatest espionage double agent once upon a ghost story, but Clint gave her a foot rub the other day when she complained about running in heels and blistered toes. 

Sharpshooters were pretty useless if they didn’t know what to aim for, she thinks.

“Why?” She asks.

The Winter Soldier looks at her, then down at half a pair of socks, then back at her, and shrugs.

Natasha sits and waits.

The Winter Soldier throws down a jean jacket with a rip in the side and then throws his head back and groans.

“I’m a fucking mess, Natalia,” the Winter Soldier says, in heavily accented Russian, “he’s a fucking mess.”

“What happened?” She demands in their shared language, “you fuck him, then? Were you going to kill him at all?”

“I wanted his entrails on a pine tree like tinsel during christmas,” the Soldier drags his metal hand down his face and gives a loud sigh, “but that was before he went all, I came back with you because I thought you would kill me.”

“And you were concerned?” She sits forward.

“I was going to kill him just on principle,” he mutters, “because I didn’t like his face. But it’s a fucking cute face.”

“You have a crush on him?” Natasha questions, eyes wide, like these few months together weren’t obvious, because technically she had spent longer cozying up to a target before shooting them point blank, except that won’t quite be necessary if Steve was the target but she could never be too sure.

“He smiled at me this morning,” the Soldier groans again, louder, “a real one, not a I’m-smiling-so-you-know-I’m-not-going-to-try-to-stab-myself-with-a-broken-mug one. Don’t look at me like that, Widow, like you didn’t defect the first time you met a blond American you thought was cute.”

\--

It’s Tony and Clint who introduce Steve to legos, Tony who rambles on with paragraphs on the therapeutic effects on tinkling with technology and screwing not-people and putting wires to circuit boards, and offering to get him an engineering for dummies and a my-first-toolkit and it’s Clint who hits him upside the head and pulls out his Stark Tablet and starts scrolling through web pages full of multicolored plastic bricks. 

The Asset signs off for a package for a Steve Stark-Barton like they’re hilarious, at the apartment and checks it for any health hazards, and he would say that legos warranted enough of a health hazard to bare feet that he briefly considered throwing out the box, but Steve’s squirming wide-eyed and curious on the couch where the Asset has his wrists tied to his ankles. Steve makes an absolutely delicious sound when kissed raggedly and arches his back so his shirt rides up and pants sink down but his eyes keep flicking with interest to the box on the coffee table. The Asset grumbles a little but finishes Steve off because he’s good like that, then wipes his lips and unties him and ruffles his hair, then lets himself go in the bathroom.

Steve’s started a project by the time the Asset handles his needs, spreading legos around the couch and coffee table, and seems to be sorting them by color and parts. It’s a box of what seems to be a million bricks and would probably soon take over the hall area and then the kitchen, so he liberates plastic bottles and odd containers and earns a very heady look and also a peck on the cheek from Steve, who continues to look content separating the red flat 2-stud to a yellow normal 1-stud and so on, blissfully oblivious about (or absolutely aware and enjoying) the shade of crimson that the Asset is slowly dissolving to.

He hates the widow, he really does.

The Asset cannot explain what went through his mind - he’s pretty certain nothing did, he lost it sometime in 1956 and he’s been slowly losing most of the rest of his sanity and discipline and whatever else he had (except his gag reflex, which he’d been diligently training), but anyways he says, “my name’s James,” so softly that if Steve didn’t have any sort of super hearing he wouldn’t have picked it up.

Steve stares at him thoughtfully and long and slow, and he unfolds gracefully from the floor and gently presses his lips to the Asset’s lips and then he’s blushing again, dammit, and Steve just smirks and goes back to his tiny bricks and the Asset has been through years of torture and training, dammit, he shouldn’t be like this.

\--

It takes the Asset about a day to figure out that Steve is building a scale lego model of the Valkyrie. It’s not even the legos that do it, it’s Sam who wanders in with matched socks and a stack of papers and says, “hey Winter, do you know why Steve asked me to find and print the concept artist sketches and recreations of the Valkyr-holy shit! Ouch! Why are there fuck- couldn’t you have given me some warning, you car wrecking, wing ripping, best friend stealing son of a-”

“He’s building a scale lego model of the Valkyrie,” the Asset says.

“Why?” Sam says incredulously.

“You’re the therapist,” the Asset shrugs, “is this a normal coping method?”

Sam ignores that. “Where’s Steve?” He demands.

“Widow came in and demanded they go shopping,” he says, “retail therapy, or some nonsense like that. That’s bullshit. She just wants to spend my money.”

Sam eyes him warily. “Money? You have a job?”

“HYDRA,” the Asset gives him a sharp grin, “SHIELD can only dream of uncovering a tenth of the money they stashed away. It’s mine now - take it as monetary compensation for the shit I had to put up with.”

Sam stares. 

The Asset stares back.

Then Sam shrugs, setting down bags of groceries that he and the other Avengers have taken liberty of bringing every time they come over, never mind that one of the only reason Steve willingly leaves the house is to stare at the produce section to pick the freshest peaches, probably some Depression-era thing that never got trained out of him, and says, “god, I don’t get why Steve’s acting like my teenage sister with a crush on you.”

“You don’t have a sister,” the Asset says instinctively.

“God you’re terrifying,” Sam squints at him, “I’m not even going to ask how you know that. I’m so glad Steve’s crush on you is mutual because he probably won’t reciprocate all that… coupley stuff you two do if you kill his best friend.”

“What makes you think that?” The Asset demands.

Sam stares at him so flatly that it reminds him of Natasha. Clearly he and the Widow have been spending a lot of time together.

\--

Steve has problems, he thinks, and it’s not just the rice.

He had stepped on a stray lego block which had embedded itself into the flesh of his big toe, and he proceeded to step on another, and then suddenly the Winter Sol-James, James is there, peeling bricks off his feet and wiping blood away and glaring into his toes.

“Steve,” he says, pained.

Steve looks up, glaring defiantly. A hand brushes the side of his cheeks comes off his face with wetness and Steve realizes he’s crying.

James presses forward his forehead to Steve’s, and breathes in deeply, and Steve shudders and cries and cries and cries.

Then he says, “I have a problem.”

“Want to tell me what it is?” James says gently, thumb slowly circling the back of Steve’s neck.

“Everything,” Steve sobs.

\-- 

It’s the fight and the cold that do it, ironically, when the Avengers have worked so hard to give him peace and stability and warmth for him to heal, when that is the place he wanted to go in the first place.

There are monsters of unknown origin, of flesh and blood and bone and yet like none other, and they split up - not in a battlefield in a channel but to multiple, Stark is deployed to Malaysia, Natasha goes to Beijing, Clint on the frontlines in Perth, Steve in Cancun. The attacks are localized in urbanized areas in various larger cities, the Winter Soldier holds down fort in Boston with Bruce scrambling for solutions in the heart of Manhattan and a decapitated creature on his lab table, courtesy of a metal arm. 

It’s some sort of sick bitter parallel, Tony thinks, some kind of ritual or rite of passage or terms and conditions in the worst possible manner - Steve unconscious in a body of water before his life changes monumentally. 

It’s a call from the government across the border after radio silence for almost 6 hours which left the Soldier wearing down a circular path with the pacing in the medical bay, after search and rescue fished out a man who by all accounts should be dead, following the words of a drunkard who proclaimed he saw a man fall from the sky. 

Steve sleeps for 66 hours, and the 67th sees the Soldier curled up by his bedside in a fitful sleep, metal fist crushing hospital fabric and flesh arm pillowing his head. Lacerations along Steve’s arms and legs have slowly smoothed over, snapped bones healed into a fracture, shattered ulna wrapped in a cast and slowly resetting itself. He looks almost peaceful, even breathing and slow beeping of the heart monitor, a cruel fate, really, to see the only stability in his life on a hospital bed - back when he was all skin and bones and thrumming adrenaline, even then, when normality was scraped knees and baked beans and medical swabs and yet it was predictability. There was a cut on his forehead above his eye that had deep stitches not 3 days ago but now a hint of a scar, and a horribly jagged gash running up the side of his torso that the Soldier was carefully not putting his weight on, even in what Natasha supposed she could call a nap.

The 68th hour was Steve screaming, screaming, crying, screaming. The Winter Soldier presses him down, straddling him as he would a lover, pinning Steve down as Steve thrashes and flails and cries and screams. Natasha rushes in, as do Clint and Tony and Bruce, staring at Steve wail incomprehensibly, about the cold and the plane and the dark, about scars and tattoos and sharks swimming in the distance, about the Valkyrie and knives and razor blades.

But then he sobs, “I don’t want to die.”

“I’m not going to let you,” the Winter Soldier bites out, so startlingly forcefully, and Natasha is momentarily reminded of handcuffs to beds and ballet tights and the words of a long dead man promising her that everything would be fine and teaching her that promises were meant to be broken, and the Winter Soldier, no, James, “James,” Steve says brokenly, James sobs into his shoulder. 

There’s something someone once told her, a lifetime ago, Natasha thinks, about ties and bonds and the loss of an emotion she can’t quite remember, and Tony is sobbing into Bruce’s shoulder and Clint is clutching onto her arm like he’s holding on for dear life with Sam holding onto her other hand and squeezing, and Steve is, Steve is repeating it like a mantra, “I don’t want to die,” and there’s something that someone whose name she’s forgotten once told her, about love and children and growing up, but she can’t quite bring herself to think about it.

\--

End?

**Author's Note:**

> How was that? Fun, right? Did anyone figure out i take art history yet?  
> P.S. If you haven't read "Red" you totally should, has a similar vibe to this fic and I'm equally proud of that one.


End file.
